Several lobbyists said they are focused on the committees of jurisdiction that have until Oct. 4 to send their recommendations to the debt panel as the first line of defense to keep their clients’ interests off the chopping block.

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Rob Collins, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), said he is thinking about it like a court case in which it is always better to win the case and not have to appeal.

“I think you always want to start in the best possible position and not have to rely on a last-minute fix,” Collins, of Purple Strategies, said. “You want to start essentially as they are germinating the ideas.”

While there is still a high level of pessimism downtown that the supercommittee won’t reach a deal, lobbyists aren’t counting on the panel failing.

“Most clients are not assuming sequestration is the final route, even if they think it might be better for them,” said Jonathon Jones of Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart. “Everyone is going to try to make a case about their issue.”

With members of the supercommittee such as Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), lobbyists said they are looking to press their cases early.

National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors Jade West is already actively pursuing getting LIFO, an accounting method that can lower tax liability, taken off the table. “I have had an opportunity to get in front of members that LIFO is not a tax deduction,” West said.

Those efforts are only beginning.

“Everybody is going to be up there doing what they can,” West said. “I think it would be a disadvantage to anybody to treat this like just another issue, just another tax bill, and I think there may be a lot more attention paid as to what that advocacy is.”

Not everyone is going to be in a defensive crouch.

Big business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plan on continuing their push for fundamental corporate tax reform.

Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff said that in addition to entitlement reform, the trade group is supportive of the supercommittee taking a “comprehensive look at our tax code to make it more efficient, transparent and less distortive.”

Still, Manny Ortiz, of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, said he still thinks the debt panel will reign supreme.

Ortiz wrote in an email that the key is “still leadership and a few select members. With Baucus and Camp on the committee, the jurisdiction play is less important.”